What is going on in Herr Weiss' class?

Archive for the ‘German Grammar How To’ Category

Today we began using the verb schenken to describe giving gifts to people.

it is a regular verb weak verb and follows the normal verb conjugation rules:

Ich schenke

Du schenkst

Er, sie, es schenkt

Wir schenken

Ihr schenkt

Sie, sie schenken

Important Tip Remember in Geman:

das Gift ≠ the gift

das gift =

das Geschenk =

Unless you really want to with something

But that’s totally up to you!

Now that we have the “false friends” cleared up with a very important word that is NOT a cognate, we have to know that the verb we are focusing on this chapter takes TWO different objects!! Yup that’s right – a direct object and an indirect object. To find out what they are keep reading!

We started out by making a list of words in a varied KWL Chart like this:

Was kann ich sagen? – das Auto, das Buch, und so weiter

Was möchte ich sagen? – things students would like to have as gifts.

Was muss ich lernen? – what do they need to know – necessarily for the chapter.

A photo of the words we came up with will be attached to this blog post.

Now here are the grammar charts we used today:

“der” words

r

e

s

e

n

e

s

e

m

r

m

n

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

Plural

“ein” words

X

e

X

e

n

e

X

e

m

r

m

n

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

Plural

These charts show the endings on all the “der” words and all the “ein” words (like mein, dein, kein, sein, all the possessive pronouns etc….)

The first row is for the nominative case – or the subject of the sentence

The second row is for the accusative case – or the direct object of the sentence

The third row is for the dative case – or the indirect object of the sentence

Like this:

The best ways to study vocabulary!
( Because just “looking at the list” does not usually cut it.). If you have an alternate website, method or a cool idea I would love to hear it! Let me and all my readers know what you do by postings comment below of what works for you!

THE MOST IMPORTANT VOCAB STUDY TIP:
Study a little bit each day instead of waiting until right before the quiz!
This helps the words enter your long-term memory – and this is where they need to be so you’ll know the words when you need them in real life (or in later levels of this class).
Alone:

* Make flash cards and quiz yourself a little each day (from English to German), sorting the words each time into piles of those you know perfectly, those you sort of know, and those you don’t know at all. Quiz yourself extra on those you don’t know as well.

* If you want to go the online route for flash cards you can make FREE flash cards online on websites like http://www.quizlet.com – you can even play word games with the vocab you put in – or even with http://www.byki.com – which offers a free version of their online program

* If you hate making flash cards, be sure to copy the words on your list and their definitions at least once on a sheet of notebook paper (in random, not alphabetical, order) so that you’ve had to practice spelling them at least once, and use this list, not mine, to study.

* If you have trouble remembering how to spell words, write each word out several times. (It’s not fun, but many students say it helps.)

* Write example sentences using each word, in German or “Denglisch.” If you like, also draw a cartoon to illustrate each word.

* Make a picture dictionary of your vocabulary words. Draw a little box for each picture, and put the word under it. Cover up the words later and see if you can remember them when you look at the pictures.

With a friend/ classmate / relative / study buddy:

* Quiz each other from English to German – you say the English word out loud and your partner has to say the German word, including its gender / plural / irregular forms.
If he/she doesn’t know it, tell him/her and quiz him/her on it again later.

* Have a spelling bee where you each take turns saying a German word to the other person, who has to write it or spell it out loud. First person to spell the given word wrong is “out.”

* Help each other think of mnemonic devices (memory tricks based on natural or goofy associations with the sound of the word or the way it looks). For example: “Blumen” means flowers, which is similar to the word “blooming” in English; or “fahren” means to drive, so think of someone driving “far.”

* Play “Pictionary,” drawing pictures to represent the vocab words and having the other person guess what word each picture is.

* Play “Hangman” using words from the list so the other person has to spell them to win. (Using German spelling, of course.)

This tense is used in spoken and written German to express something that happened in the past.

Just like in English, it is composed of a helping verb(in German they are haben or sein) and apast participle of the verb you are trying to make into the past.

The helping verb is the only one conjugated!

Examples:

I haveplayedsoccer.

Ich habe Fußball gespielt.

I have drivento school.

Ich binzur Schule gefahren.

You should already know how to conjugate the helping verbs that we are going to need to make the past tense but here they are:

haben

sein

ich

habe

wir

haben

ich

bin

wir

sind

du

hast

Ihr

habt

du

bist

ihr

seid

er,sie,es

hat

Sie, sie

haben

er,sie,es

ist

Sie,sie

sind

Since there are two different helping verb options that can be used in German there are some rules so that you know which is the right choice!

sein is used ONLY in 3 circumstances:

a. with sein

b. movement (that will take you from point A to B)

c. a change in state (ie: birth, death, awake, asleep)

Haben is used in all other circumstances

Now that we have the background on how helping verbs work in conjunction with the Perfekt tense let’s focus on the verbs themselves!

There are 4 categories of verbs that we are going to discuss:

weak verbs

strong verbs

verbs that end in “ieren”

verbs with seperable prefixes

The first rule is that we need to isolate the “stem” of the verb, if the last letter of the stem is a “t”, “d” or “consonant +n” – example: arbeiten, wandern, regnen – than you will need to KEEP THE “E”

Weak Verbs:

– these verbs are ones that follow the normal conjugation rules

– are put into the past tense by adding “ge” in front of the stem and “t” after the stem.

How do you do this?

1) take the infinitive

machen (make, do)

2) remove the

-en

suffix

mach

3) replace it with the

–t

suffix

macht

4) add

ge–

prefix

gemacht

Examples:

machen = gemacht

kaufen = gekauft

spielen = gespielt

brauchen = gebraucht

arbeiten = gearbeitet

suchen = gesucht

Example sentences:

lernen: Ich habe das ganze Wochenende Deutsch gelernt.

wohnen: Du hast in der Türkei gewohnt.

leben: Er hat lange in Amerika gelebt.

lieben: Sie hat ihre Kinder sehr geliebt.

heiraten: Wir haben 1979 geheiratet.

baden: Ihr habt im See gebadet.

grillen: Sie haben Bratwurstchen gegrillt.

Strong Verbs:

– these verbs are ones that break the normal conjugation rules with exceptions such as stem changes

– are put into the past tense by adding “ge” in front of the infinitive verb.

Examples:

lesen = gelesen

gehen = gegangen

fahren = gefahren

essen = gegessen

sehen = gesehen

kommen = gekommen

fressen = gefressen

sein = gewesen

“ieren” Verbs

– these verbs are the ones that end with “ieren”.

– Verbs that have this ending tend to be very similar to English. And they’re all regular verbs, so they don’t require a change to the stem in conjugations.

– are put into the past tense by simply changing the ending to “t”.

– NO ‘ge’ is added.

Examples:

imitieren = imitiert

diskutieren = diskutiert

spazieren = spaziert

reparieren = repariert

fotografieren = fotografiert

studieren = studiert

Verbs with a Separable Prefix

– The past participal is formed by inserting the “ge” between the separable prefix and the rest of the verb.

This topic deals with conjunctions, words that combine two words, phrases, clauses and sentences. There are two types coordinating – or ones that can stand alone and subordinating – a phrase using one of these needs the first clause for it to make sense.

Coordinating Conjunctions

I am only going to give the basic four conjunctions that are most often used by beginning German speakers. When you combine two sentences or clauses using them there is no change in word order once you have combined the two.

They are:

und – and

oder – or

aber – but

denn – because

Here is a little rhyme for you: Und, oder, aber, denn – verb does not come at the end!

Here are some examples:

Ich spiele Basketball und ich bin ein guter Basketballspieler!

Ich kann heute segeln oder Schach spielen.

Ich gehe nicht ins Kino denn ich habe Hausaufgaben.

Try seeing if you can find which coordinating conjunction goes in the blank!

Usage of "aber": "Today we have Mr. Mertens as our guest, who for the past 17 years has had to sneeze, but cannot. Mr. Mertens when did this all start? Mr. Mertens? Mr. Mertens?

Here is a video to explain both:Subordinating Conjunctions

Here is a “rap” video on how they work in English!

Subordinating conjunctions rely on the first clause for the second clause to make any sense! In German the word order CHANGES! The verb in the second clause will now come at the end! Four of the most popular subordinating conjunctions for beginning German learners are:

dass – that/so that

weil – because

ob – if

wenn – if/when

Here is a rhyme for these four: Dass, weil, ob, wenn – verb is at the end!

Like this:

The imperative in German is used when issuing a command to someone or more than one person. In English we use the you understood rule; Go home! or Shut the door! or Shut up! (I don’t have you in those phrases but you know I’m talking to YOU) This works the same way for the most part in German. At the bottom of this post there are links to online practice, videos and websites with more explanation!

Check out this awesomely made video by some German students!

First the verb is alwaysin the first position of the sentence!

Second are you talking to one person or more than one person or do you need to be formal?

Next the “formula” for creating a command is in the following table under which pronoun you are using.

Things to remember:

Make sure you are aware if the verb is a stem changing verb, ex geben – du gibst or lesen – du liest, if so you need to change it! Stem changing verbs only change when you are using du, er, sie or es FYI 🙂